Seven Months Gone

Today marks seven months since Hubby officially left home on his journey to the sandbox. What has happened and changed over the past month?

- Number of meals cooked this month: 0 
  Running total for deployment: 0
(Note that I do not count frozen pizzas, chicken nuggets or baking a hamburger in the oven as cooking.)

- EEP!! Only about two more months until Hubby returns!! That's so exciting!! I've noticed a pattern whenever he leaves for a long time. The first few months of separation fly by so fast, the next few drag along and are pretty difficult, and the final three or so are full of excitement and anticipation about his return. I've finally entered the excitement and anticipation stage - I can't wait for him to come back home!!

- Scrapalooza saw the completion of 31 pages. I'm still trapped in 2004, and need to find my way to our departure from Europe in October of 2005 before the Hubby gets back if I'm going to meet my goal. I'd better get my ass in gear and start scrapping hardcore again!

- Sweet Sadie has graduated to being able to sleep in the bed with me at night. There are no destructive messes in the house, and she has finally learned the schedule! It is so comforting to have her body curled up next to mine in the bed. Just the presence of another being in the bed is nice these days. Of course, Fred always has to "one better" Sadie. Since she now has a place in the bed, he has started sleeping on his Daddy's pillows! They truly are silly pups - and they love each other's company so much!

- For the record, the Black Beast (Hubby's car) seems to be falling apart while on my watch, and I am totally not amused. In addition to the leaky power steering fluid, causing the Hicas light to keep coming on…now the antenna won't work properly. Garr! It's not my fault, I swear! And I'm concentrating on keeping my Granny Mobile in good running order long enough to sell it later this year…in order to herald in the Era of the Heep!!

- No additions to the garden this month. I'm concentrating on maintaining my army of plants and trying to keep as much alive as I can in the face of the impending heat wave that we call Summer here in the Central Valley. I fear that most of my container garden will perish in the intense heat of the summer. I'm intensely hoping to have some sort of cover in place over our west-facing patio by this time next year…maybe I'll have better luck then.

- Reports from the Front...Stress level - pretty high. Work is keeping me going full steam ahead. We're totally slammed these days, with barely enough staff to keep going. I'm hanging in there…there is a small skeleton crew keeping things afloat until who knows when. It's bringing us all closer together, though…and that is a huge positive. We've instituted an awesome new coping mechanism…Mad Libs! OMG - they're so funny! We all look forward to the designated Mad Lib time of the day. We find ourselves literally rolling on the floor in laughter - which is a good thing. We all need something funny to look forward to every day, and this seems to fit the bill. I got bitten this month - by a little POS dog - my hand didn't turn blue or fall off, so I guess I'll live. And no bull…well, okay…maybe a little bull. We had a bull running in the city this month! It was quite the story - made for a very interesting week when it happened.J And speaking of the week of the bull, during the very same week we also brought in a ferret (illegal in Cali - who knew?…well, apparently the cop that pulled over the car that had said ferret as a passenger knew…), a giant iguana, a python sighting and the turn over of a family of hamsters. We have quite the menagerie!